Media Use Diary and Analysis

The consumption and production of my media usage was logged over ten consecutive days and the data above shows the raw results. My first impression looking at the figures was that I used a hell of a lot more media than I assumed. Altogether I logged a total of 65.8 hours of media use in those ten days, an average of 6.5 hours a day (wowzer!). The majority of that comes from listening to music with a whopping 11.5 hours, 7.9 hours of reading and watching online news, and spending 6.4 hours blogging on tumblr. That's a lot of time in front of a computer screen with headphones in. On the other side of the scale, I haven't yet become a twitter addict like so many others with just an hour spent. I also only used about 40 minutes on Instagram. Maybe I'm not a total media junkie just yet.

Let's have a closer look at my news media intake, specifically in comparison to my peers of JOUR1111. Note that 88.5% of these students are aged within two years of my 19 years, and 75.7% are female like me, so whether the survey's results can be projected to everyone's media usage or just young female adults is debatable. I, for one, am pretty sure my granny isn't listing to 11 hours of music in a week.

The majority of my personal news awareness comes from either the television or online news sources like The Guardian website, ABC website, Facebook, and youtube journalists. This is reflected in the peer survey which shows almost half of students getting their news from TV and/or online newspapers. 

I believe my personal news consumption and how I get it is a pretty accurate model of how larger society will soon consume their news, if it's no already there. Two decades ago the only source of news was on paper and TV, but now we have so many other platforms to explore. Have a look at these graphs of how I and my JOUR1111 cohort get our news in relation to "old media" - traditional media that's given to the masses, such as TV, magazine, and radio - and "new media", media that focuses on social groups like Facebook, twitter, online papers, etc. 

The graphs show very similar stories. Old media consumption still outweighs new media, but only by a fraction. Many people think that the internet will overthrow old media like newspapers altogether, but I disagree. We live in a world now where people want everything mobile and on demand. The survey showed 80% of students had smart phones and 15% owned tablets, all of which news can be accessed by. Newspapers are already pushing everything they publish onto twitter and Facebook. And it's just a matter of time before TV news shows start streaming online or through YouTube. So of course online newspapers and Facebook news applications are becoming more popular. But this won't destroy Fox News or ABC. At least 70% of those surveyed are still getting their news from TV. It's just there are now new platforms for the same content. The only thing left to devise is how to increase profits from online content, but we'll leave that to Uncle Rupert and his paywalls. 

POVERTY AID MERELY AIDING CORRUPTION & HOPELESSNESS

Just last week I was surfing through YouTube when I came across a clip of a man named Andrew Mwenda. Mwenda is a Ugandan journalist, founder of Uganda's premier news magazine The Independent, and one of Foreign Policy magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers. But he is most famous for his active critic of Western aid to Africa. In the YouTube clip Mwenda speaks at the 2007 TED Conference about the negative effects of foreign aid in Africa.


Mwenda argues that aid makes objects of the poor -- they become passive recipients of charity rather than active participants in their own economic betterment.

"...Africa is likely to get better with less meddling in its affairs by the West, not more -- whether that meddling is through aid, peacekeeping, or well-written speeches. Africa needs space to make mistakes and learn from them. The solutions for Africa have to be shaped and articulated by Africans, not outsiders." - Andrew Mwenda, Foreign Policy 2009

Mwenda confronts the common western belief that the problems in Africa are a direct result of bad rulership. Instead he says "it is not the individual behaviour of Africa's rulers that demands our closest attention... It is the structure of incentives those leaders confront -- incentives that help determine the choices they make.", implying that the aid western countries give the governments and leaders force them to make decisions they may not have made without. I can't help but agree with Mwenda.


I have a lot of family living in the third world country of Samoa. My father was born and raised in the tropics of Savaii and though he moved to Australia, his brothers and sisters still remain on the Island. I've visited Samoa many times and have seen first hand the effect financial handouts can have on a country.


As Mwenda mentioned, government corruption is a massive factor when large amounts of western aid is administered and I've seen it. The current Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi has been in office since 1998 and is well known in the community for giving leadership roles to family members and friends just for being so. Also, the transparency and accountability of financial aid is something left to be desired. The exact percentages of how the aid has been split is yet to be given.


But what's even more interesting is the effect financial aid has on people's attitudes towards the idea of earning money. I was taught the value of money as a kid. Every cent I got was earned from doing something like washing the dishes or vacuuming the house, and I'm grateful for the lessons because I now know how to be financially responsible. But what if you weren't given that chance as a kid? What if the only source of income you've ever known was handouts from the government or family overseas?


The people in Samoa suffer from a lack of opportunities. There are hardly any jobs so they aren't earning an income. Luckily, most family have land they can cultivate and use to feed themselves but there is still a need of money for school, clothes, and other essentials. That's where they rely on handouts from family working overseas and government aid. They aren't learning new skills or gaining self fulfilment from earning their own money or learning how to be financially responsible. The people have entrepreneurial ambitions and career aspirations but they lack the opportunity to express them. The economy suffers and every generation is the same. If western countries were to continue helping there poorer ones, they need to focus on creating these kind of opportunities.


The governments should invest in local businesses. Encourage small business owners to expand and employ more people, and large working companies should be incorporated too. People are getting education but have no where to use it. Bring in law firms, science and agriculture centres, and company engineering. But more than that, the Samoan government should take the lead in everything. Samoa needs to come into it's own and that can only happen if western countries stop babying it.


It will take many years, generations even, to change third world countries from being dependent on handouts to being active participants in their own economic betterment. They need to be supported but not so much that corruption and passive recipients of charity are encouraged.

KONY 2012: ADVOCATES VS CRITICS

The Kony 2012 documentary and movement has absolutely swept the western world. The Kony 2012 film was posted by an activist organisation called the Invisible Children on March 5th and was viewed by over 25 Million people across the globe in under 48 hours. The tag #stopkony is trending world wide on twitter and celebrities Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Oprah, Ryan Seacrest, and many more have all declared their support to the cause.

If you haven't heard of Joseph Kony, don't worry, neither had most people until the YouTube clip appeared on their Facebook or twitter this week. To summarise, the documentary is a call to the public to make a warlord -Joseph Kony- famous. Joseph Kony is the leader of a guerrilla group in Central Africa named the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA. The LRA are a militant group known for brutal crimes against civilians including murder, rape, mutilations, and torture. Kony and the LRA are accused of abducting over 30,000 children from northern Uganda. The Invisible Children wrote the following:

Joseph Kony’s tactics were—and remain—brutal. He often forced children to kill their parents or siblings with machetes or blunt tools. He abducted girls to be sex slaves for his officers. He brainwashed and indoctrinated the children with his lies and manipulated them with his claim of spiritual powers. (source)

Most of the LRA's leaders have never been held accountable for their crimes, though some efforts are going into bringing them to justice. Kony and two of his key commanders are currently wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Kony himself
has 33 charges, 12 counts of crimes against humanity and 21 counts of war crimes.

Clearly Kony and the LRA need to be apprehended, but what is interesting is why, when the LRA have been committing these atrocities for 26 years, does the Kony campaign now have so much traction and public support? Obviously the documentary ignited a lot of passion for the cause. With it's powerful images, emotive music, and interviews of blonde toddlers, how could it not? But the bulk of the credit has to go to social media. The twitter trends are covered with Kony 2012, Facebook friends have been non-stop sharing the film and creating events to "cover the night", and YouTube first hosted the documentary with 300,000 comments on the clip to date. It created such a fan fair on the interwebs that it even hit TV news. Co-founder of Invisible Children Inc. and director of the Kony 2012 film Jason Russell has been doing interview after interview on TV to not only raise more awareness but to defend his organisation.

When it comes to charity, especially high profile charities like the Invisible Children Inc., there are always going to be critics and skeptics. These are the top 5 criticisms:

1. The Kony 2012 campaign is a simplistic approach to solving a complex issue.
   Scholars and policy makers have laboured over trying to solve the problems in Africa for decades. Sharing a video and raising money for more awareness is doing nothing to actually reduce the conflict.
2. The Kony 2012 campaign is misleading.
   The documentary failed to show that Kony hadn't been in Uganda for up to 6 years. Also, the LRA has dwindled over the years to just a couple of hundred. Kony is already on his last legs.
3. Invisible Children work closely with the Ugandan Army in planning to bring down Kony.
   The army of Uganda have been implicated in their own human rights violations including rape and the murder of civilians. Working with them only encourages what they do.
4. Charity Navigator, the top charity evaluator in the US, gave Invisible Children just 2 out of 4 stars for accountability and transparency.
5. Invisible Children only used 37% of the money raised to help people on the ground in Uganda. Most of it should have gone to the people in the most need.

Invisible Children address the critique on their website and maintain that what they are doing and working toward is of fundamental value to the world. They released their annual financial report and their breakdown of expenses is particularly interesting. It shows that they spend most of their funds on Central African programs (37%) like the legacy scholarship program and rehabilitation centre. A large bulk of funds also goes towards awareness programs in the western world (26%). Jason Russell addressed this in an interview on the Today show.

"We believe in the power of educating the western world...It's hard for people to understand how you can both educate the western world while you're educating and rehabilitating war-torn children...We split the money into both our advocacy and awareness [programs] and it is also going into our rehabilitation programs." (source)

At the end of the day, whether you believe in the Invisible Children or not as an organisation, it is undeniable that their documentary has brought to light the incredible power of the internet and of social media. People are now aware of the difference they can make just by pressing a 'share' button. One day we will look back on this Kony 2012 campaign and see that this is when the evolution of social networking began and the power of the internet was fully realised.